Geocaching, geocoins and the many roads of life.
This is made up of stories from my caching and my reviewing. It is a collection of those along with comments and thoughts. Photos, and maps of some adventures and lists of some of the oldest caches.
Go team go. The updates should be done soon.
Now we have favorites, I am really curious as to what will come out the favorites caches. Some will not make any sense.
Yes it still has its bugs, great caches that are not found a lot, will not get many finds because of that.
Enjoy the Maps, and stats.
As mentioned in a previous post Stat, Maps and Favorites premium members will have a new stats page. I have received a few questions that I think I will be able to answer.
Yes they will. If you have no desire to show them you do not have to show them.
I have read that in a few spots. In reality many cachers do not know how to use GSAK, or have not taken the time to understand all of the functions that are available. For them this will be a simple and quick way to show their stats without getting more complex.
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Those were the two that came to mind. You can turn off your stats if you wish and continue to see your GSAK stats. They are on different tabs, so you can keep them both.
Things start moving to a crawl as snow starts to fall in the mountains. It is funny that most of what I reviewed last year was in southern Utah. Though there was still a lot of stuff going on in the rest of the state. It was much more pleasant there, not 120 degrees in the shade like July/Aug. So we are in their prime geocaching season.
I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone. There is so much support. As I sit here in Idaho at families house, far from home. I am so thankful for the work that everyone puts in.
I am amazed at the creativity of caches, the tireless work to make events work, the patience when I make a mistake, and the time people take to make this hobby better.
So now as I watch the snow outside, think of how warm it is inside, and I contemplate actually finding a cache out in it (don't bet on it, I tend to only play in the snow when I snow camp with the scouts).
This year has seen a lot of activity in the Geocaching world. The 10/10/10 events, bug event at headquarters, many changes on GC.com, and the upcoming addition of new maps, statistics and favorites. I think we have seen about 7000-8000 caches added this year. All because of the great cachers in the states.
Take the time this Tuesday when the site is updated and add your favorites. Thank those that placed the caches for you, pick out the best, and reward them.
So enjoy the time you have, enjoy the season, and thanks for the hard work.
I know this is normally about geocaching, but was sad to me.
In the mid to late 90's I lived in downtown Provo. Single and passing the time I would take many walks throught the downtown district. One of the features is the Provo Tabernacle. It is the gathering place that is used every week by the local LDS church when they wish to have a conference or a gathering for a number of local wards (parishes).
It is also used for many community concert and choir events and being in the center of the city many county activities surround the building.
Over the years I have taken a number of pictures of the building. Black and Whites (that I need to find now). Now that has came to an end. Finished in 1890 after 15 years it was some of the nicest woodwork, architecture, and stained glass fin the state from that era.
I feel like I lost an old friend. It will be missed.
Here is a link to more pictures from before the fire, from the historical website. A warning they are large and it takes a while to load the page.
They have been discussing these changes for some time, in some cases for a long time. Ideas were tossed around and off they went. Then a few months ago the reviewers had a sneak peak at some of the ideas, and others we were told what direction they were going. More ideas were tossed around, and now we are coming to a culmination of what I would imagine is 6-8 months of work on the projects.
All of this is subject to change, and barring a massive collapse of the system, or finding a huge bug that has been undiscovered we will get a number of fantastic new changes to the site. So without further discussion......
There will now be a new page on your profile. It will house geocachings new stats page. This will be a compilation of a number of the commonly gathered stats. There are plans to make more additions to this, but this is the initial roll out of the information. You will be able to hide your stats if you wish, but the default is a planned "on". It will be tied to the Premium Member feature, and I am seeking more info on that. I should know soon.
The stats page will look very familiar. We see many of those out and about now.
This is really cool, really cool. Did I mention it was cool? When I first heard of it and saw the link to a movie I kind of ignored it. After hearing how cool it was I went and actually pulled up the video. A photo/screen shot cannot really do it justice.
The biggest change....... wait for the drum roll please...... No more 500 cache limit. Actually the limit will be infinite. You could (in theory) see all the caches at one time.
The maps are larger, and far more dynamic. Zooming in and out looks very smooth. Much more than the one we use now and especially when you get to 400 caches now it is very choppy, but with 3000 it looked smooth. :D woo hoo.
This is a huge change for the site. Where the other steps make the experience on the site very useful. This is a game changer in how you may actually look for caches.
Based on the number of finds you will get a favorite point.
These will be earned by finding caches. Woo hoo, finding caches give you points.. everyone likes that. Except now a you will be able to award points to your favorite caches.
The problem with many averaging systems is people. I may rate a persons find high because he is my friend, or I love all power trails so I rate them high, or mountain peaks, I may even love LPC caches, or quick finds. Other people may hate my cacher friend, power trails or LPC's, and only love those that challenge.
In essence votes start to cancel others out. You never see a 1 star or a 5 star. or even a 1.5-4.5 if many votes are given. they tend to all end up in the 2-4 range, and over time a 4.5 star cache degrades, and cache quality also. The system quickly becomes useless.
Now you can take the points that you earn, and donate them to your favorite caches.
On a cache page you will have the ability to add your favorite points to caches, and take them away.
Voila simple and clean.
You will be able to go to the page and see who liked the cache.
Your page will tell you where the points are, so you can go back and reclaim points if you find better caches, or when you realize that a LPC, or nano cache is not really your favorite.
Last but not least you will be able to sort by favorites. Look for those that others found most excellent.
Hopefully you get the idea.
Premium member. that is the magic word that I did not mention much. Most of these functions are going to be available to premium members only in varying degrees. Premium members will be able to give favorite points (to avoid spamming the site with fake logs, and likes). I do think this is a game changer. You can only give them to caches you have found. So once a cache is found you can mark it as a favorites.
So start dusting off the cobwebs from your mind. Think of the best caches you have visited, so you can mark them, and then you can find them on the new map while checking your fantastic stats.
(Screenshots used were courtesy of Groundspeak)
On a quick follow up. Some skimmed over my opening note where i mentioned the changes were due in the next few weeks (before Christmas). The site upgrade on the 14th had more to do with the site hardware, and some other upgrades not the monthly website upgrade.
